The present invention relates to a method for the automatic ascertainment and further processing of the meaning of verbally provided information. The meaning of verbal messages is reconstructed by the system on the basis of procedures that simulate the elements of the human process of understanding language. Logically false and meaningless statements are identified. For ambiguous statements, a clear interpretation is generated as a function of the current context (a context-bound removal of ambiguity). In the course of ascertaining the meaning, a situation model is constructed and is continuously updated. Conflicts arising between the current situation (or the current condition of a system being controlled) and the meaning of the verbal inputs are detected and are reported to the user. Specific expert knowledge can optionally be employed for an expanded risk analysis.
The consequences of the actions and events contained in the verbal messages (or control commands) are anticipated by the system and are checked in the context of a virtual realization. On the basis of the virtual realization, the meaning of the verbal input is converted into control commands for downstream technical systems/robots.
An example of a voice-recognition system is familiar from DE 100 51 794 A1, which remains, however, at the level of a simple tabular assignment, without realizing meaning-based processing. The language-processing systems that are disclosed in DE 100 50 808 A1 and in DE 197 15 099 A1 advance a little further but are nevertheless limited to very narrow technical areas and for this reason can also operate without meaning recognition. In addition, in these cases, before being lexically assigned, the language input is already subject to a filter, so that no free, conceptual ascertainment of the verbal meaning takes place independently of the specific context. In particular, the systems do not operate on a conceptual level, but rather they assemble a reaction from a simple grammatical link of stored commands, or from a syntactic link that has already been input.